A Blend of Art and Science

Shawn and John Kennington used to play a question game with their children.

If you could open your own business, what would it be, and why? 

If you had a million dollars you couldn’t spend on yourself, what would you spend it on, and why? 

If you could take one thing to the moon, what would you take, and why?  

So, they already knew the follow-up when they asked themselves a question: If we opened a winery in South Carolina, what would it be like, and why?

A sign welcomes people to Kennington Family Winery in Marietta, SC. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University.

Kennington Family Winery in Marietta, South Carolina, exists to bring exquisite wines to the Upstate and to create a place where guests linger until they become family.  

“These two things became our true north,” says Shawn Kennington ’86. She and her husband, John, wanted a place where people “could just sit and drink a beautiful glass of wine, breathe in some mountain air and relax a little more deeply.” 

Kennington has spent her professional life in the biotech industry and is no stranger to fermentation, sterile conditions and glass containers. With that background, the winery doesn’t feel like such a leap.  

“Winemaking is this wonderful blend of science and artistry,” she says.  

It’s been about five years since the Kenningtons began to think about the next phase of their life. She considered everything from consulting to pharmacology. But in the summer of 2019, the couple attended a series of unrelated events at different wineries.  

“I started looking around, going, ‘This looks like fun, this looks like something we could do,’” she says.

The Kennington Family Winery seal on barrels in the winery. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University.

FORMATIVE YEARS

Kennington came to the university as a 16-year-old freshman. “Furman is where I fell in love with science,” she says. 

She planned to major in chemistry, but organic chemistry her sophomore year almost changed her mind. Professor Don Kubler was “so mean, so hard, I was leaving chemistry and I was going to go into history,” she says. 

She ranted to her parents; they advised her to talk to Kubler. 

Not only did she make it through organic chemistry, she also didn’t change her major and she ended up working for Kubler as a research assistant. 

“It was very much a formative summer,” she says. 

When it was time for grad school, she leaned on Kubler’s advice: “Where you’re happy, you’ll be able to do great science,” he told her. “But you’ll never do great science if you’re not happy.” 

It ended up being good advice both academically and personally – Kennington met her husband John on her first day at the University of Virginia.  

Decades later, when looking for land for the winery, they knew they wanted to be close to “Kubler Mountain,” the couple’s fond name for the part of South Carolina where the professor had lived.  

“Dr. Kubler did more to shape me as a scientist (than anyone else) and for that I am, and always will be, very, very grateful to him and to Furman,” Kennington says.

A view of the Kennington Family Winery from the gardens. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University.

CREATING DIRECTION

After completing her doctoral degree, Kennington worked briefly for a small biotech company in Washington, D.C., then joined Eli Lilly in 1992. (Her husband, who was doing postdoctoral work at the time, joined the company two years later.) 

She’s worked for the company in numerous roles related to drug metabolism and drug development. Most of the positions have been in leadership, a word she prefers to “the dreaded management title.” 

“Managers oversee tasks and leaders create direction,” she says.  

She’s currently senior vice president for research and global regulatory affairs, but she’s also beginning to write her second chapter. 

In 2020, she and her husband purchased the property that would become the winery. It’s situated between Greenville and Hendersonville, North Carolina, just far enough from either city to encourage people to take their time when they visit.  

Construction began in 2021, and the winery opened in the spring of 2022. 

“It’s meant to feel like a little bit of Tuscany, plopped here in the middle of South Carolina,” says Kennington, who loves to take Eli Lilly conference calls on the winery patio on the days it’s closed.

EXPLORING IDEAS

The winery’s first offerings were purchased in bulk from a few select winemakers and bottled on-site. Since then, team members have begun to work their way backward in the process, creating custom blends and aging them in their own barrels. 

“We’ve done everything but grow the grapes,” Kennington says. 

Kennington Family Winery in Marietta, S.C., serves multiple varieties of wine. Photo by Nathan Gray, Furman University.

That part’s coming, though. They’ve planted a small vineyard and plan to add more vines each year.  

“It’s constantly exploring and trying things,” she says. “Some work well and some not so well. You learn from the successes and you learn from the failures. As long as we approach this with curiosity, it’s always good.” 

There’s a wine club up and running. And wine slushies were such a hit that the 1.5-liter machine they bought first was quickly replaced with a commercial-sized one. 

Kennington looks into the future and imagines a gazebo, trails, an archery course. She had the vision to partner with Furman to create a private-label cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc that will be ready for release in the fall of 2025. 

“Being a scientist means you’re looking for something,” she says. “It’s like an explorer, in a different way.”

MOMENTS OF JOY

Kennington did not come to the job of winery owner with hospitality experience. “I’m a chemist,” she says, laughing.  

But she has traveled the world for work. “I know what good looks like, I know what bad looks like,” she says.  

She and John have two sons and a daughter. One son, their daughter and their son-in-law all work at the winery. 

“Everybody brings ideas to the table and everybody brings vastly different skills,” she says. “I am so blessed to watch these folks grow and learn, just watch them become.” 

She recalls a recent moment when she stood in the shadows and watched her son Phillip, the winery’s general manager, host a wine club dinner, while her son-in-law, Curtis Midkirk, assistant tasting room manager and leader of wine production, talked about the bottles being poured that night.  

“Tears (were) just flowing down my face because I was so doggone proud of them,” she says.  

It’s not the only time the gift of this place has made her cry. The evening of the grand opening, a band played, and she watched an elderly couple dance at the back of the lawn. 

“Once again, I’m an old, sappy romantic,” she says. “I thought, ‘That’s what this is all about. They are in the middle of the lawn, dancing. That is joy. That is peace.’ Every time I see those moments of joy, they stop me in my tracks.”